Abbey Theatre
Front facade
Address	26 Lower Abbey Street
City	Dublin
Country	Ireland
Designation	National Theatre of Ireland
Architect	Michael Scott
Owned by	Abbey Theatre Limited (prev. National Theatre Society)
Capacity	600
Opened	1904
Rebuilt	1965
Previous names	Ireland's National Theatre
abbeytheatre.ie

The Abbey Theatre (Irish: Amharclann na Mainistreach), also known as the National Theatre of Ireland (Irish: Amharclann Náisiúnta na hÉireann), is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day. The Abbey was the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world; from 1925 onwards it received an annual subsidy from the Irish Free State. Since July 1966, the Abbey has been located at 26 Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 1.^[1]

A theatre or circus has stood on this site on Lower Abbey Street since at least the early 19th century. In the mid-19th century, at the urging of Dublin's gentry, John Classon, an upper-class merchant, acquired the buildings then on the site, one of which had housed a circus, in order to establish a joint concert hall and civic institution for the lower classes. The Music Hall, which could seat 4000 persons, in addition to hosting concerts, frequently hosted popular variety entertainments like Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal. In the late 19th Century the Music Hall was renamed the Mechanics' Theatre, after the adjacent Mechanics' Institute. The theatre was also known during this time as the Hibernian Theatre of Varieties, a name it retained until the building was acquired for Abbey Theatre at the beginning of the 20th Century.^[2][3][4]

In its early years, the theatre was closely associated with the writers of the Irish Literary Revival, many of whom were involved in its founding and most of whom had plays staged there. The Abbey served as a nursery for many of the leading Irish playwrights and actors of the 20th century, including William Butler Yeats, Augusta, Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey and John Millington Synge. In addition, through its extensive programme of touring abroad and its high visibility to foreign, particularly American, audiences, it has become an important part of the Irish tourist industry.^[5]

History[link]

Irish Literary Theatre[link]

A poster for the opening run at the Abbey Theatre from 27 December 1904 to 3 January 1905

The Abbey arose from three distinct bases, the first of which was the seminal Irish Literary Theatre. Founded by Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and W.B.Yeats in 1899—with assistance from George Moore^[6]—it presented plays in the Ancient Concert Rooms and the Gaiety Theatre, which brought critical approval but limited public interest.

The second base involved the work of two Irish brothers, William and Frank Fay.^[7] William worked in the 1890s with a touring company in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, while Frank was heavily involved in amateur dramatics in Dublin. After William returned to Dublin, the Fay brothers staged productions in halls around the city and eventually formed W. G. Fay's Irish National Dramatic Company, focused on the development of Irish acting talent. In April 1902, the Fays gave three performances of Æ's play Deirdre and Yeats' Cathleen Ní Houlihan in a hall in St. Theresa's Hall on Clarendon Street. The performances played to a mainly working-class audience rather than the usual middle-class Dublin theatregoers. The run was a great success, thanks in part to Maud Gonne, who played the lead in Yeats' play. The company continued at the Ancient Concert Rooms, producing works by Seumas O'Cuisin, Fred Ryan and Yeats.

The third base was financial support and experience of Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman. Horniman was a middle-class Englishwoman with previous experience of theatre production, having been involved in the presentation of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man in London in 1894. She came to Dublin in 1903 to act as Yeats' unpaid secretary and to make costumes for a production of his play The King's Threshold. Her money helped found the Abbey Theatre and, according to the critic Adrian Frazier, would "make the rich feel at home, and the poor—on a first visit—out of place."^[8]

Foundation[link]

Lady Gregory pictured on the frontispiece to Our Irish Theatre: A Chapter of Autobiography (1913)

Encouraged by the St Theresa's Hall success, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Æ, Martyn, and John Millington Synge founded the Irish National Theatre Society in 1903 with funding from Horniman. At first, they staged performances in the Molesworth Hall.^[9] When the Hibernian Theatre of Varieties in Lower Abbey Street and an adjacent building in Marlborough Street became available after fire safety authorities closed the Hibernia, Horniman and William Fay agreed to buy and refit the space to meet the society's needs.^[10]

On 11 May 1904, the society formally accepted Horniman's offer of the use of the building. As Horniman did not usually reside in Ireland, the royal letters patent required were granted in the name of Lady Gregory, although paid for by Horniman. The founders appointed William Fay theatre manager, responsible for training the actors in the newly established repertory company. They commissioned Yeats' brother Jack to paint portraits of all the leading figures in the society for the foyer, and hired Sarah Purser to design stained glass for the same space.^[11]

On 27 December, the curtains went up on opening night. The bill consisted of three one-act plays, On Baile's Strand and Cathleen Ní Houlihan by Yeats, and Spreading the News by Lady Gregory. On the second night, In the Shadow of the Glen by Synge replaced the second Yeats play. These two bills alternated over a five-night run. Frank Fay, playing Cúchulainn in On Baile's Strand, was the first actor on the Abbey stage.^[12] Although Horniman had designed the costumes, neither she nor Lady Gregory was present. Horniman had returned to England. In addition to providing funding, her chief role with the Abbey over the coming years was to organise publicity and bookings for their touring productions in London and provincial England.

In 1905 without properly consulting Horniman, Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge decided to turn the theatre into a limited liability company, the National Theatre Society Ltd.^[13] Annoyed by this treatment, she hired Ben Iden Payne, a former Abbey employee, to help run a new repertory company which she founded in Manchester.^[14]

Early years[link]

The new Abbey Theatre found great popular success, and large crowds attended many of its productions. The Abbey was fortunate in having Synge as a key member, as he was then considered one of the foremost English-language dramatists. The theatre staged many plays by eminent or soon-to-be eminent authors, including Yeats, Lady Gregory, Moore, Martyn, Padraic Colum, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St John Gogarty, F. R. Higgins, Thomas MacDonagh, Lord Dunsany, T. C. Murray, James Cousins and Lennox Robinson. Many of these authors served on the board, and it was during this time that the Abbey gained its reputation as a writers' theatre.

John Millington Synge, author of The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots at the Abbey on the play's opening night.

The Abbey's fortunes worsened in January 1907 when the opening of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World resulted in civil disturbance. The troubles (since known as the Playboy Riots) were encouraged, in part, by nationalists who believed the theatre was insufficiently political and who took offence at Synge's use of the word 'shift', as it was known at the time as a symbol representing Kitty O'Shea and adultery, and hence was seen as a slight on the virtue of Irish womanhood.^[15] Much of the crowd rioted loudly, and the actors performed the remainder of the play in dumbshow.^[16] The theatre's decision to call in the police further roused anger of the nationalists. Although press opinion soon turned against the rioters and the protests faded, management of the Abbey was shaken. They chose not to stage Synge's next—and last completed—play, The Tinker's Wedding (1908), for fear of further disturbances. That same year, the Fay brothers' association with the theatre ended when they emigrated to the United States; Lennox Robinson took over the Abbey's day-to-day management.

In 1909, Shaw's The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet led to further protests. The subsequent discussion occupied a full issue of the theatre's journal The Arrow. Also that year, the proprietors decided to make the Abbey independent of Annie Horniman, who had indicated a preference for this course. Relations with Horniman had been tense, partly because she wished to be involved in choosing which plays were to be performed and when. As a mark of respect for the death of King Edward VII, an understanding existed that Dublin theatres were to close on the night of 7 May 1910. Robinson, however, kept the Abbey open.^[17] When Horniman heard of Robinson's decision, she severed her connections with the company.^[18] By her own estimate, she had invested £10,350—worth approximately $1 million in 2007 US dollars—on the project.

With the loss of Horniman, Synge, and the Fays, the Abbey under Robinson tended to drift, suffering from falling public interest and box office returns. This trend was halted for a time by the emergence of Sean O'Casey as an heir to Synge.^[19] O'Casey's career as a dramatist began with The Shadow of a Gunman, staged by the Abbey in 1923. This was followed by Juno and the Paycock in 1924, and The Plough and the Stars in 1926. Theatregoers arose in riots over the last play, in a way reminiscent of those that had greeted the Playboy 19 years earlier.^[20] Concerned about public reaction, the Abbey rejected O'Casey's next play. He emigrated to London shortly thereafter.^[21]

In 1924, Yeats and Lady Gregory offered the Abbey to the government of the Free State as a gift to the Irish people. Although the government refused, the following year Minister of Finance Ernest Blythe arranged an annual government subsidy of £850 for the Abbey. This made the company the first state-supported theatre in the English-speaking world.^[22] The subsidy allowed the theatre to avoid bankruptcy, but the amount was too small to rescue it from financial difficulty.

Affiliated schools[link]

The Abbey School of Acting and The Abbey School of Ballet were set up that year. The latter was led by Ninette de Valois—who had provided choreography for a number of Yeats' plays—and ran until 1933.^[23]

The Peacock and the Gate[link]

Around this time the company acquired additional space, allowing them to create a small experimental theatre, the Peacock, in the ground floor of the main theatre. In 1928, Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammoir launched the Gate Theatre, initially using the Peacock to stage works by European and American dramatists.^[24] The Gate primarily sought work from new Irish playwrights and, despite the new space, the Abbey entered a period of artistic decline.

This is illustrated by the story of how one new work was said to have come to the Gate Theatre. Denis Johnston reportedly submitted his first play, Shadowdance, to the Abbey; however, Lady Gregory rejected it, returning it to the author with "The Old Lady says No" written across the title page.^[25] Johnston decided to re-title the play. The Gate staged The Old Lady Says 'No' in The Peacock in 1928. (Note: academic critics Joseph Ronsley and Christine St. Peter have questioned the veracity of this story.)^[26]

After Yeats[link]

The tradition of the Abbey as primarily a writers' theatre survived Yeats' withdrawal from day-to-day involvement. Frank O'Connor sat on the board from 1935 to 1939, served as managing director from 1937, and had two plays staged during this period. He was alienated from and unable to cope with many of the other board members. They held O'Connor's past adultery against him. Although he fought formidably to retain his position, soon after Yeats died, the board began machinations to remove O'Connor.^[27][28]

During the 1940s and 1950s, the staple fare at the Abbey was comic farce set in the idealised peasant world of playwright Éamon de Valera. If it had ever existed, it was no longer considered relevant by most Irish citizens. As a result, audience numbers continued to decline. This drift might have been more dramatic but popular actors, including F. J. McCormick, and dramatists, including George Shiels, could still draw a crowd. Austin Clarke staged events for his Dublin Verse Speaking Society—later the Lyric Theatre—at the Peacock from 1941 to 1944 and the Abbey from 1944 to 1951.

On 17 July 1951, fire destroyed the Abbey Theatre, with only the Peacock surviving intact.^[29] The company leased the old Queen's Theatre in September and continued in residence there until 1966. The Queen's had been home to the Happy Gang, a team of comedians who specialised in popular skits, farces and pantomimes and drew wide audiences. With its continued diet of 'peasant comedies', the new tenants were not far removed from the old.

Neither Brendan Behan nor Samuel Beckett, two of the more interesting Irish dramatists to emerge in the 1950s, featured in these productions. In February 1961, the ruins of the Abbey were demolished. The board had plans for rebuilding with a design by the Irish architect Michael Scott. On 3 September 1963, the President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, laid the foundation stone for the new theatre. The Abbey reopened on 18 July 1966.^[30]

Recent years[link]

New generation[link]

A new building; a new generation of dramatists, including such figures as Hugh Leonard, Brian Friel and Tom Murphy; and tourism that included the National Theatre as a key cultural attraction, helped revive the theatre. Beginning in 1957, the theatre's participation in the Dublin Theatre Festival aided its revival. Plays such as Brian Friel's Philadelphia Here I Come! (1964), The Faith Healer (1979) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990); Tom Murphy's A Whistle In the Dark (1961) and The Gigli Concert (1983); and Hugh Leonard's Da (1973) and A Life (1980), helped raise the Abbey's international profile through successful runs in the West End in London, and on Broadway in New York City.

In December 2004, the theatre celebrated its centenary with events that included performances of the original programme by amateur dramatic groups and a production of Michael West's Dublin By Lamplight, originally staged by Annie Ryan for The Corn Exchange company at the Project Arts Centre in November 2004. Despite the centenary, not all was well. Audience numbers were falling; the Peacock was closed for lack of money; the theatre was near bankruptcy, and the staff felt the threat of huge lay-offs.

In September 2004 two members of the theatre's advisory council, playwrights Jimmy Murphy and Ulick O'Connor, had tabled a motion of no confidence in Artistic Director Ben Barnes. They criticised Barnes for touring with a play in Australia during the deep financial and artistic crisis at home. Barnes returned and temporarily held his position.^[31] The debacle put the Abbey under great public scrutiny. On 12 May 2005, Barnes and Managing Director Brian Jackson resigned after it was found that the theatre's deficit of €1.85 million had been underestimated.^[32] The new director, Fiach Mac Conghail, due to start in January 2006, took over in May 2005.^[33]

On 20 August 2005, the Abbey Theatre Advisory Council approved a plan to dissolve the Abbey's owner, the National Theatre Society, and replace it with a company limited by guarantee, the Abbey Theatre Limited. After strong debate, the board accepted the program. Basing its actions on this plan, the Arts Council of Ireland awarded the Abbey €25.7 million in January 2006 to be spread over three years.^[33] The grant represented an approximate 43 percent increase in the Abbey's revenues and was the largest grant ever awarded by the Arts Council.^[34] The new company was established on 1 February 2006, with the announcement of a new Abbey Board chaired by High Court Judge Bryan McMahon. In March 2007, the larger auditorium in the theatre was radically reconfigured by Jean-Guy Lecat as part of a major upgrade of the theatre.

In 2009, the Literary Department announced the pilot of a new development initiative, the New Playwrights Programme. The six writers taking part in this pilot programme were: Aidan Harney, Lisa Keogh, Shona McCarthy, Jody O’Neill, Neil Sharpson and Lisa Tierney-Keogh.

More than 20 writers have been commissioned by the Abbey since Mac Conghail was appointed director in May 2005.^[35] The Abbey is also producing new Irish plays commissioned and developed by London's Royal Court Theatre; Tom Murphy's Alice Trilogy and Marina Carr's Woman and Scarecrow are examples. The Abbey is also developing a relationship with the Public Theater in New York, where it has presented two new plays; Terminus by Mark O'Rowe and Sam Shepard's Kicking a Dead Horse.

Development[link]

After discussions over many years, the Irish government announced in 2007 that a new theatre building would be procured for the Abbey by way of a public-private partnership contract for design, construction, financing and maintenance. This building will be in Dublin's "Docklands" area and will comprise three auditorium spaces, including a 700-seat main theatre, a 350-seat secondary performance space and a 150-seat studio theatre, along with rehearsal and education facilities, storage, wardrobe, archive and office space, and one or more bars and restaurants and a bookshop.

The general and artistic operation of the new theatre will continue to be the responsibility of the Abbey Theatre Amharclann na Mainistreach Ltd.^[36]

Temporary closure[link]

On 9 May 2012, the Abbey Theatre announced a temporary closure to facilitate the removal of asbestos.^[37]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Fitz-Simon, Christopher. The Abbey Theatre—Ireland's National Theatre: The First 100 Years. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003. ISBN 0-500-28426-1
• Foster, R. F. W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. II: The Arch-Poet 1915–1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-818465-4.
• Frazier, Adrian. Behind the Scenes: Yeats, Horniman, and the Struggle for the Abbey Theatre. Berkeley: University of California, March 1990. ISBN 0-520-06549-2
• Gregory, Lady Augusta. Our Irish Theatre. New York and London: Knickerbocker Press, 1913.
• Grene, Nicholas. The Politics of Irish Drama: Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel. Cambridge University Press, February 1999. ISBN 0-521-66536-1
• Hogan, Robert, and Richard Burnham. Modern Irish Drama: A Documentary History. Vols. I-VI..
• Hunt, Hugh. The Abbey: Ireland's National Theater, 1904–1979. New York: Columbia University Press, October 1979. ISBN 0-231-04906-4
• Igoe, Vivien. A Literary Guide to Dublin. Methuen, April 1995. ISBN 0-413-69120-9
• Kavanagh, Peter. The Story of the Abbey Theatre. New York: Devin-Adair, 1950.
• Kilroy, James. The "Playboy" Riots. Dublin: Dolmen Pres, 1971. ASIN: B000LNLIXO
• McGlone, James P. Ria Mooney: The Life and Times of the Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre. McFarland and Company, February, 2002. ISBN 0-7864-1251-8
• Robinson, Lennox. Ireland's Abbey Theatre. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1951.
• Ryan, Philip B. The Lost Theatres of Dublin. The Badger Press, September 1998. ISBN 0-9526076-1-1
• Welch, Robert. The Abbey Theatre, 1899–1999: Form and Pressure. Oxford: Oxford University Press, February 1999. ISBN 0-19-926135-0

External links[link]

• Abbey Theatre homepage.
• The Abbey and the genius of Irish theatre.
• Denis Johnston and The Old Lady Says 'No'
• Dublin's Abbey in centenary crisis—Guardian Unlimited.
• Barnes to stay on as Abbey Theatre director—RTÉ News
• Arts Council voices concern over Abbey—RTÉ News
• Resignations—RTÉ News.
• Abbey Theatre Collection at Southern Illinois University Carbondale Special Collections Research Center

Coordinates: 53°20′54″N 6°15′26″W / 53.34833°N 6.25722°W / 53.34833; -6.25722

Bernard Farrell
Born	Bernard Farrell 1939 Sandycove, Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Occupation	Playwright
Nationality	Ireland
Alma mater	CBC Monkstown
Notable work(s)	I Do Not Like Thee, Doctor Fell
Notable award(s)	Rooney Prize for Irish Literature

Bernard Farrell (born 1939) is an Irish dramatist, best known for his play I Do Not Like Thee, Doctor Fell, which parodies American psychobabble and the Irish reaction thereto.

He has been Writer-In-Association with the Abbey Theatre, served on the Advisory Council of the Abbey and, for eight years, was a Director on the Board of the Abbey. He lives in Greystones, Co.Wicklow.

Playwright[link]

Born in Sandycove, Co. Dublin. Both his parents were passionate about the theatre and his childhood was filled with attending plays.^[1] Following school at CBC Monkstown and further education at People's College Ballsbridge he worked for Sealink until 1980, when he resigned to write fulltime for the theatre. Most of his 21 stage plays have been premiered at either the Abbey Theatre or the Gate Theatre in Dublin or at Red Kettle Theatre in Waterford. These include I Do Not Like Thee, Doctor Fell (1979), Canaries (1980), All In Favour Said No! (1981), All The Way Back (1985), Say Cheese (1987), Forty-Four Sycamore (1992), The Last Apache Reunion (1993), Happy Birthday Dear Alice (1994), Stella By Starlight (1997), Kevin’s Bed (1998), The Spirit Of Annie Ross (1999), Lovers At Versailles (2002), Many Happy Returns (2005) and The Verdi Girls which was specially commissioned by The Laguna Playhouse, California and premiered there in 2007.

Many of his stage plays are in translation and have been performed extensively in North America, Europe and Australia

[edit] I Do Not Like Thee, Doctor Fell

I Do Not Like Thee, Doctor Fell was Farrell's first stage play and is considered his best. It was first performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1979, starring a young Liam Neeson as Roger in one of his first roles.^[2][3]

The play is one of the most popular plays in Ireland with it often reproduced. It also enjoyed success abroad.^[4][5] It has been presented twice at the Acting Irish International Theatre Festival in 1995 (by Milwaukee Irish Arts) and again in 2005 (by the Tara Players of Winnipeg.)

Television and Radio Drama[link]

He has also written television drama for both RTÉ and BBC and his radio plays have been widely broadcast and have represented Ireland at the Prix Italia. His television drama includes Lotty Coyle Loves Buddy Holly (RTÉ, 1984); with Graham Reid, Foreign Bodies (BBC, 1985–1988); Glenroe drama series, RTÉ); Radio Waves (RTÉ/BBC 1995). His radio drama includes Gliding With Mrs Gleeson (BBC and RTÉ); The Scholarship Trio (RTÉ); The Final Whistle (RTÉ); When Mr Kelly Met Mozart (RTÉ); The Day Grandpa Disappeared (RTÉ); The Year of Jimmy Somers (RTÉ entry for 1987 Prix Italia); The Final Whistle (RTÉ entry for 1992 Prix Italia).

Awards and honours[link]

He is a recipient of Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Sunday Tribune Comedy of the Year Award, the Dublin Theatre Festival award for Best Irish Production and his Kevin’s Bed was nominated for Best Play of 1998 in the Irish Times/ESB Theatre Awards.

He has been Writer-In-Association with the Abbey Theatre, served on the Advisory Council of the Abbey and, for eight years, was a Director on the Board of the Abbey. He lives in Greystones, Co.Wicklow.

Works[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• [1]
• [2]
• [3]
• [4]

v t e Recipients of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature Heno Magee (1976) Desmond Hogan (1977) Peter Sheridan (1978) Kate Cruise O'Brien (1979) Bernard Farrell (1980) Neil Jordan (1981) Medbh McGuckian / Special Prize: Seán Ó Tuama & Thomas Kinsella (1982) Dorothy Nelson (1983) Ronan Sheehan (1984) Frank McGuinness (1985) Paul Mercier (1986) Deirdre Madden (1987) Glenn Patterson (1988) Robert McLiam Wilson (1989) Mary Dorcey (1990) Anne Enright (1991) Hugo Hamilton (1992) Gerard Fanning (1993) Colum McCann (1994) Philip MacCann (1995) Mike McCormack (1996) Anne Haverty (1997) David Wheatley (1998) Mark O'Rowe (1999) Claire Keegan (2000) Keith Ridgway (2001) Caitríona O'Reilly (2002) Eugene O'Brien (2003) Claire Kilroy (2004) Nick Laird (2005) Philip Ó Ceallaigh (2006) Kevin Barry (2007) Leontia Flynn (2008) Kevin Power (2009) Leanne O'Sullivan (2010) Dan Rooney Oscar Wilde Centre

Sebastian Barry (born 5 July 1955) is an Irish playwright, novelist and poet. He is noted for his dense literary writing style and is considered one of Ireland's finest writers.^[1]

Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.

He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side was longlisted for the Booker.

Early life[link]

Barry was born in Dublin. He is the son of the late Irish actress Joan O'Hara. He attended Catholic University School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus.

Work[link]

His academic posts have included Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa (1984), Villanova University (2006) and Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin (1995–1996). Barry started his literary career with the novel Macker's Garden in 1982. This was followed by several books of poetry and a further novel The Engine of Owl-Light in 1987 before his career as a playwright began with his first play produced in the Abbey theater, Boss Grady's Boys in 1988.

Barry's maternal great-grandfather, James Dunne, provided the inspiration for the main character in his most internationally known play, The Steward of Christendom. The main character, named Thomas Dunne in the play, was the chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police from 1913-1922. He oversaw the area surrounding Dublin Castle until the Irish Free State takeover on 16 January 1922. One of his grandfathers belonged to the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers.

Both The Steward of Christendom and the novel The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, are about the dislocations (physical and otherwise) of loyalist Irish people during the political upheavals of the early 20th century. The title character of the latter (McNulty), for instance, is a young man forced to leave Ireland by his former friends for his political beliefs during the Anglo-Irish War.

He also wrote Hinterland, a satirical play based loosely on former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, the performance of which caused a minor controversy in Dublin. The Sunday Times, which did not review the play, criticized it as "feeble, puerile, trite, dissociated, shallow, exploitative and gratuitously offensive".^[2]

Barry's work in fiction came to the fore during the 1990s. His novel A Long Long Way was shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, and was selected for Dublin's 2007 One City One Book event. ^[3] The novel tells the story of Willie Dunne, a young recruit to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the First World War. It brings to life the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt at the time following the Easter Rising in 1916. {Willie Dunne, son of the fictional Thomas Dunne, first appears as a minor but important character in The Steward of Christendom.}

Barry's 2008 novel, The Secret Scripture won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction (announced in August 2009), the oldest such award in the UK, the 2008 Costa Book of the Year (announced January 27, 2009)^[4] and in French translation Le testament caché it won the 2010 Cezam Prix Littéraire Inter CE.^[5] It was also a favourite to win the 2008 Man Booker Prize, narrowly losing out to Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

Sebastian Barry's most recent play is Andersen's English,^[6] and is inspired by children's writer Hans Christian Andersen coming to stay with Charles Dickens and his family in the Kent marshes. Directed by Max Stafford-Clark and produced by Out of Joint and Hampstead Theatre, it toured in the UK from 11 February to 8 May 2010.

On Canaan's Side, Barry's fifth novel, concerns Lily Bere, the sister of the character Willy Dunne from A Long Long Way and the daughter of the character Thomas Dunne from The Steward of Christendom, as she emigrates to the US. The novel was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize.

Personal life[link]

Barry lives in County Wicklow with his family.

List of works[link]

Poetry

• The Water Colourist (1983)
• The Rhetorical Town (1985)

Fiction

• Mackers Garden (1982)
• The Engine of Owl-Light (1987)
• The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998)
• Annie Dunne (2002)
• A Long Long Way (2005)
• The Secret Scripture (2008)
• On Canaan's Side (2011)

Plays

• The Pentagonal Dream (1986)
• Boss Grady's Boys (1988)
• Prayers of Sherkin (1990)
• White Woman Street (1992)
• The Only True HIstory of Lizzie Finn (1995)
• The Steward of Christendom (1995)
• Our Lady of Sligo (1998)
• Hinterland (2002)
• Whistling Psyche (2004)
• Fred and Jane (2004)
• The Pride of Parnell Street (2008)
• Dallas Sweetman (2008)
• Tales of Ballycumber (2009)
• Andersen's English (2010)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Sebastian Barry, Unaffiliated Website
• Sebastian Barry at Contemporary Writers
• Sebastian Barry's Writer's Reflect at the Harry Ransom Center

George Bernard Shaw
Shaw in 1915
Born	(1856-07-26)26 July 1856 Dublin, Ireland
Died	2 November 1950(1950-11-02) (aged 94) Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
Occupation	Playwright, critic, political activist
Nationality	Irish
Genres	Satire, black comedy
Literary movement	Ibsenism, naturalism
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1925 Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay 1938 Pygmalion
Influences Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, Henrik Ibsen, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henry George, William Morris, Karl Marx, H. M. Hyndman
Influenced Socialism and Fabianism in the United Kingdom, Colin Wilson, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.

He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the London County Council.

In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St Lawrence in a house now called Shaw's Corner. Shaw died there, aged 94, from chronic problems exacerbated by injuries he incurred by falling from a ladder.

He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (adaptation of his play of the same name), respectively.^[1] Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright because he had no desire for public honours, but accepted it at his wife's behest: she considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books into English.^[2]

Life[link]

Shaw's birthplace, Dublin

Early years and family[link]

George Bernard Shaw was born in Synge Street, Dublin, on 26 July 1856^[3] to George Carr Shaw (1814–85), an unsuccessful grain merchant and sometime civil servant, and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, née Gurly (1830–1913), a professional singer. He had two sisters, Lucinda Frances (1853–1920), a singer of musical comedy and light opera, and Elinor Agnes (1855–76).

Education[link]

Shaw briefly attended the Wesley College, Dublin, a grammar school operated by the Methodist Church in Ireland, before moving to a private school near Dalkey and then transferring to Dublin's Central Model School. He ended his formal education at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. He harboured a lifelong animosity toward schools and teachers, saying: "Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents".^[4] In the astringent prologue to Cashel Byron's Profession young Byron's educational experience is a fictionalized description of Shaw's own schooldays. Later, he painstakingly detailed the reasons for his aversion to formal education in his Treatise on Parents and Children.^[5] In brief, he considered the standardized curricula useless, deadening to the spirit and stifling to the intellect. He particularly deplored the use of corporal punishment, which was prevalent in his time.

When his mother left home and followed her voice teacher, George Vandeleur Lee, to London, Shaw was almost sixteen years old. His sisters accompanied their mother^[6] but Shaw remained in Dublin with his father, first as a reluctant pupil, then as a clerk in an estate office. He worked efficiently, albeit discontentedly, for several years.^[7] In 1876, Shaw joined his mother's London household. She, Vandeleur Lee, and his sister Lucy, provided him with a pound a week while he frequented public libraries and the British Museum reading room where he studied earnestly and began writing novels. He earned his allowance by ghostwriting Vandeleur Lee's music column,^[8][9] which appeared in the London Hornet. His novels were rejected, however, so his literary earnings remained negligible until 1885, when he became self-supporting as a critic of the arts.

Personal life[link]

The front of Shaw's Corner as it stands today

Influenced by his reading, he became a dedicated Socialist and a charter member of the Fabian Society,^[10] a middle class organization established in 1884 to promote the gradual spread of socialism by peaceful means.^[7] In the course of his political activities he met Charlotte Payne-Townshend, an Irish heiress and fellow Fabian; they married in 1898. The marriage was never consummated, at Charlotte's insistence, though he had had a number of affairs with married women.^[11]

In 1906 the Shaws moved into a house, now called Shaw's Corner, in Ayot St. Lawrence, a small village in Hertfordshire, England; it was to be their home for the remainder of their lives, although they also maintained a residence at 29 Fitzroy Square in London.

Political activism[link]

Shaw declined to stand as an MP, but in 1897 he was elected as a local councillor to the London County Council as a Progressive.^[12]

Contributions[link]

Shaw's plays were first performed in the 1890s. By the end of the decade he was an established playwright. He wrote sixty-three plays and his output as novelist, critic, pamphleteer, essayist and private correspondent was prodigious. He is known to have written more than 250,000 letters.^[13] Along with Fabian Society members Sidney and Beatrice Webb and Graham Wallas, Shaw founded the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1895 with funding provided by private philanthropy, including a bequest of £20,000 from Henry Hunt Hutchinson to the Fabian Society. One of the libraries at the LSE is named in Shaw's honor; it contains collections of his papers and photographs.^[14] Shaw helped to found the left-wing magazine New Statesman in 1913 with the Webbs and other prominent members of the Fabian Society.^[15]

Final years[link]

During his later years, Shaw enjoyed attending to the grounds at Shaw's Corner. At 91 he joined the Interplanetary Society for the last three years of his life.^[16] He died at the age of 94,^[17] of renal failure precipitated by injuries incurred by falling while pruning a tree.^[18] His ashes, mixed with those of his wife, Charlotte Payne-Townshend, were scattered along footpaths and around the statue of Saint Joan in their garden.^[19]

Career[link]

Writings[link]

See Works by George Bernard Shaw for listings of his novels and plays, with links to their electronic texts, if those exist.

The International Shaw Society provides a detailed chronological listing of Shaw's writings.^[20] See also George Bernard Shaw, Unity Theatre.^[21]

Criticism[link]

Shaw around 1900.

Shaw became a critic of the arts when, sponsored by William Archer, he joined the reviewing staff of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885.^[22] There he wrote under the pseudonym "Corno di Bassetto" ("basset horn")—chosen because it sounded European and nobody knew what a corno di bassetto was. In a miscellany of other periodicals, including Dramatic Review (1885–86), Our Corner (1885–86), and the Pall Mall Gazette (1885–88) his byline was "GBS".^[23] From 1895 to 1898, Shaw was the drama critic for his friend Frank Harris's Saturday Review, in which position he campaigned brilliantly to displace the artificialities and hypocrisies of the Victorian stage with a theatre of actuality and thought. His earnings as a critic made him self-supporting as an author and his articles for the Saturday Review made his name well-known.

George Bernard Shaw was highly critical of productions of Shakespeare, and specifically denounced the dramatic practice of editing Shakespeare's plays, whose scenes tended to be cut in order to create "acting versions". He notably held famous 19th-century actor Sir Henry Irving in contempt for this practice, as he expressed in one of his reviews:

"In a true republic of art, Sir Henry Irving would ere this have expiated his acting versions on the scaffold. He does not merely cut plays; he disembowels them. In Cymbeline he has quite surpassed himself by extirpating the antiphonal third verse of the famous dirge. A man who would do that would do anything –cut the coda out of the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or shorten one of Velázquez's Philips into a kitcat to make it fit over his drawing room mantelpiece."

Shavian scholar John F. Matthews credits him, as a result, with the disappearance of the two-hundred-year-old tradition of editing Shakespeare into "acting versions".^[24]

Shaw in 1909.

Shaw photographed by the press.

He had a very high regard for both Irish stage actor Barry Sullivan's and Johnston Forbes-Robertson's Hamlets, but despised John Barrymore's. Barrymore invited him to see a performance of his celebrated Hamlet, and Shaw graciously accepted, but wrote Barrymore a withering letter in which he all but tore the performance to shreds. Even worse, Shaw had seen the play in the company of Barrymore's then wife, but did not dare voice his true feelings about the performance aloud to her.^[25]

Much of Shaw's music criticism, ranging from short comments to the book-length essay The Perfect Wagnerite, extols the work of the German composer Richard Wagner.^[26] Wagner worked 25 years composing Der Ring des Nibelungen, a massive four-part musical dramatization drawn from the Teutonic mythology of gods, giants, dwarves and Rhine maidens; Shaw considered it a work of genius and reviewed it in detail. Beyond the music, he saw it as an allegory of social evolution where workers, driven by "the invisible whip of hunger", seek freedom from their wealthy masters. Wagner did have socialistic sympathies, as Shaw carefully points out, but made no such claim about his opus. Conversely, Shaw disparaged Brahms, deriding A German Requiem by saying "it could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker".^[27] Although he found Brahms lacking in intellect, he praised his musicality, saying "...nobody can listen to Brahms' natural utterance of the richest absolute music, especially in his chamber compositions, without rejoicing in his natural gift". In the 1920s, he recanted, calling his earlier animosity towards Brahms "my only mistake".^[26] Shaw's writings about music gained great popularity because they were understandable to the average well-read audience member of the day, thus contrasting starkly with the dourly pretentious pedantry of most critiques in that era.^[28] All of his music critiques have been collected in Shaw's Music.^[29] As a drama critic for the Saturday Review, a post he held from 1895 to 1898, Shaw championed Henrik Ibsen whose realistic plays scandalized the Victorian public. His influential Quintessence of Ibsenism was written in 1891.^[30]

Novels[link]

Shaw wrote five unsuccessful novels at the start of his career between 1879 and 1883. Eventually all were published.

The first to be printed was Cashel Byron's Profession (1886),^[31] which was written in 1882. Its eponymous character, Cashel, a rebellious schoolboy with an unsympathetic mother, runs away to Australia where he becomes a famed prizefighter. He returns to England for a boxing match, and falls in love with erudite and wealthy Lydia Carew. Lydia, drawn by sheer animal magnetism, eventually consents to marry despite the disparity of their social positions. This breach of propriety is nullified by the unpresaged discovery that Cashel is of noble lineage and heir to a fortune comparable to Lydia's. With those barriers to happiness removed, the couple settles down to prosaic family life with Lydia dominant; Cashel attains a seat in Parliament. In this novel Shaw first expresses his conviction that productive land and all other natural resources should belong to everyone in common, rather than being owned and exploited privately. The book was written in the year when Shaw first heard the lectures of Henry George who advocated such reforms.

Shaw in 1925, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

Written in 1883, An Unsocial Socialist was published in 1887.^[32] The tale begins with a hilarious description of student antics at a girl's school then changes focus to a seemingly uncouth laborer who, it soon develops, is really a wealthy gentleman in hiding from his overly affectionate wife. He needs the freedom gained by matrimonial truancy to promote the socialistic cause, to which he is an active convert. Once the subject of socialism emerges, it dominates the story, allowing only space enough in the final chapters to excoriate the idle upper class and allow the erstwhile schoolgirls, in their earliest maturity, to marry suitably.

Love Among the Artists was published in the United States in 1900 and in England in 1914,^[33] but it was written in 1881. In the ambiance of chit-chat and frivolity among members of Victorian polite society a youthful Shaw describes his views on the arts, romantic love and the practicalities of matrimony. Dilettantes, he thinks, can love and settle down to marriage, but artists with real genius are too consumed by their work to fit that pattern. The dominant figure in the novel is Owen Jack, a musical genius, somewhat mad and quite bereft of social graces. From an abysmal beginning he rises to great fame and is lionized by socialites despite his unremitting crudity.

The Irrational Knot was written in 1880 and published in 1905.^[34] Within a framework of leisure class preoccupations and frivolities Shaw disdains hereditary status and proclaims the nobility of workers. Marriage, as the knot in question, is exemplified by the union of Marian Lind, a lady of the upper class, to Edward Conolly, always a workman but now a magnate, thanks to his invention of an electric motor that makes steam engines obsolete. The marriage soon deteriorates, primarily because Marian fails to rise above the preconceptions and limitations of her social class and is, therefore, unable to share her husband's interests. Eventually she runs away with a man who is her social peer, but he proves himself a scoundrel and abandons her in desperate circumstances. Her husband rescues her and offers to take her back, but she pridefully refuses, convinced she is unworthy and certain that she faces life as a pariah to her family and friends. The preface, written when Shaw was 49, expresses gratitude to his parents for their support during the lean years while he learned to write and includes details of his early life in London.

Shaw's first novel, Immaturity, was written in 1879 but was the last one to be printed in 1931.^[35] It relates tepid romances, minor misfortunes and subdued successes in the developing career of Robert Smith, an energetic young Londoner and outspoken agnostic. Condemnation of alcoholic behavior is the prime message in the book, and derives from Shaw's familial memories. This is made clear in the books's preface, which was written by the mature Shaw at the time of its belated publication. The preface is a valuable resource because it provides autobiographical details not otherwise available.

Short stories[link]

Shaw writing in a notebook at the time of first production of his play Pygmalion.

A collection of Shaw's short stories, The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales, was published in 1934.^[36] The Black Girl, an enthusiastic convert to Christianity, goes searching for God. In the story, written as an allegory, somewhat reminiscent of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Shaw uses her adventures to expose flaws and fallacies in the religions of the world. At the story's happy ending, the Black Girl quits her searchings in favor of rearing a family with the aid of a red-haired Irishman who has no metaphysical inclination.

One of the Lesser Tales is The Miraculous Revenge (1885), which relates the misadventures of an alcoholic investigator while he probes the mystery of a graveyard—full of saintly corpses—that migrates across a stream to escape association with the body of a newly buried sinner.

Plays[link]

The texts of plays by Shaw mentioned in this section, with the dates when they were written and first performed can be found in Complete Plays and Prefaces.^[37] Shaw began working on his first play destined for production, Widowers' Houses, in 1885 in collaboration with critic William Archer, who supplied the structure. Archer decided that Shaw could not write a play, so the project was abandoned. Years later, Shaw tried again and, in 1892, completed the play without collaboration. Widowers' Houses, a scathing attack on slumlords, was first performed at London's Royalty Theatre on 9 December 1892. Shaw would later call it one of his worst works, but he had found his medium. His first significant financial success as a playwright came from Richard Mansfield's American production of The Devil's Disciple (1897). He went on to write 63 plays, most of them full-length.

Often his plays succeeded in the United States and Germany before they did in London. Although major London productions of many of his earlier pieces were delayed for years, they are still being performed there. Examples include Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893), Arms and the Man (1894), Candida (1894) and You Never Can Tell (1897).

Shaw's plays, like those of Oscar Wilde, contained incisive humour, which was exceptional among playwrights of the Victorian era; both authors are remembered for their comedy.^[38] However, Shaw's wittiness should not obscure his important role in revolutionizing British drama. In the Victorian Era, the London stage had been regarded as a place for frothy, sentimental entertainment. Shaw made it a forum for considering moral, political and economic issues, possibly his most lasting and important contribution to dramatic art. In this, he considered himself indebted to Henrik Ibsen, who pioneered modern realistic drama, meaning drama designed to heighten awareness of some important social issue. Significantly, Widowers' Houses — an example of the realistic genre — was completed after William Archer, Shaw's friend, had translated some of Ibsen's plays to English and Shaw had written The Quintessence of Ibsenism.^[39]

As Shaw's experience and popularity increased, his plays and prefaces became more voluble about reforms he advocated, without diminishing their success as entertainments. Such works, including Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), Man and Superman (1903), Major Barbara (1905) and The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), display Shaw's matured views, for he was approaching 50 when he wrote them. From 1904 to 1907, several of his plays had their London premieres in notable productions at the Court Theatre, managed by Harley Granville-Barker and J. E. Vedrenne. The first of his new plays to be performed at the Court Theatre, John Bull's Other Island (1904), while not especially popular today, made his reputation in London when King Edward VII laughed so hard during a command performance that he broke his chair.^[40]

By the 1910s, Shaw was a well-established playwright. New works such as Fanny's First Play (1911) and Pygmalion (1912), had long runs in front of large London audiences. Shaw had permitted a musical adaptation of Arms and the Man (1894) called The Chocolate Soldier (1908), but he had a low opinion of German operetta. He insisted that none of his dialogue be used, and that all the character names be changed, although the operetta actually follows Shaw's plot quite closely, in particular preserving its anti-war message. The work proved very popular and would have made Shaw rich had he not waived his royalties, but he detested it and for the rest of his life forbade musicalization of his work, including a proposed Franz Lehár operetta based on Pygmalion. Several of his plays formed the basis of musicals after his death—most famously the musical My Fair Lady—it is officially adapted from the screenplay of the film version of Pygmalion rather than the original stage play (keeping the film's ending), and librettist Alan Jay Lerner kept generous chunks of Shaw's dialogue, and the characters' names, unchanged.

Shaw's outlook was changed by World War I, which he uncompromisingly opposed despite incurring outrage from the public as well as from many friends. His first full-length piece, presented after the War, written mostly during it, was Heartbreak House (1919). A new Shaw had emerged—the wit remained, but his faith in humanity had dwindled. In the preface to Heartbreak House he said:

"It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orators of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will. Thus our democracy moves in a vicious circle of reciprocal worthiness and unworthiness."^[41]

The movable hut in the garden of Shaw's Corner, where Shaw wrote most of his works after 1906, including Pygmalion.

Shaw had previously supported gradual democratic change toward socialism, but now he saw more hope in government by benign strong men. This sometimes made him oblivious to the dangers of dictatorships. Near his life's end that hope failed him too. In the first act of Buoyant Billions (1946–48), his last full-length play, his protagonist asks:

"Why appeal to the mob when ninetyfive per cent of them do not understand politics, and can do nothing but mischief without leaders? And what sort of leaders do they vote for? For Titus Oates and Lord George Gordon with their Popish plots, for Hitlers who call on them to exterminate Jews, for Mussolinis who rally them to nationalist dreams of glory and empire in which all foreigners are enemies to be subjugated."^[42]

In 1921, Shaw completed Back to Methuselah, his "Metabiological Pentateuch". The massive, five-play work starts in the Garden of Eden and ends thousands of years in the future; it showcases Shaw's postulate that a "Life Force" directs evolution toward ultimate perfection by trial and error. Shaw proclaimed the play a masterpiece, but many critics disagreed. The theme of a benign force directing evolution reappears in Geneva (1938), wherein Shaw maintains humans must develop longer lifespans in order to acquire the wisdom needed for self-government.

Methuselah was followed by Saint Joan (1923), which is generally considered to be one of his better works. Shaw had long considered writing about Joan of Arc, and her canonization in 1920 supplied a strong incentive. The play was an international success, and is believed to have led to his Nobel Prize in Literature.^[43] The citation praised his work as "...marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty". At this time Prime Minister David Lloyd George was considering recommending to the King Shaw's admission to the Order of Merit, but the place was instead given to J. M. Barrie.^[43] Shaw rejected a knighthood.^[43] It was not until 1946 that the government of the day arranged for an informal offer of the Order of Merit to be made: Shaw declined, replying that "merit" in authorship could only be determined by the posthumous verdict of history.^[43]

He wrote plays for the rest of his life, but very few of them are as notable—or as often revived—as his earlier work. The Apple Cart (1929) was probably his most popular work of this era. Later full-length plays like Too True to Be Good (1931), On the Rocks (1933), The Millionairess (1935), and Geneva (1938) have been seen as marking a decline. His last significant play, In Good King Charles Golden Days has, according to St. John Ervine,^[44] passages that are equal to Shaw's major works.

Shaw's published plays come with lengthy prefaces. These tend to be more about Shaw's opinions on the issues addressed by the plays than about the plays themselves. Often his prefaces are longer than the plays they introduce. For example, the Penguin Books edition of his one-act The Shewing-up Of Blanco Posnet (1909) has a 67-page preface for the 29-page playscript.

Polemics[link]

In a letter to Henry James dated 17 January 1909,^[45] Shaw said:

"I, as a Socialist, have had to preach, as much as anyone, the enormous power of the environment. We can change it; we must change it; there is absolutely no other sense in life than the task of changing it. What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods."^[46]

Thus he viewed writing as a way to further his humanitarian and political agenda. His works were very popular because of their comedic content, but the public tended to disregard his messages and enjoy his work as pure entertainment. He was acutely aware of that. His preface to Heartbreak House (1919) attributes its rejection to the need of post-World War I audiences for frivolities, after four long years of grim privation, more than to their inborn distaste of instruction. His crusading nature led him to adopt and tenaciously hold a variety of causes, which he furthered with fierce intensity, heedless of opposition and ridicule. For example, Common Sense about the War (1914) lays out Shaw's strong objections at the onset of World War I.^[47] His stance ran counter to public sentiment and cost him dearly at the box-office, but he never compromised.^[48]

Shaw joined in the public opposition to vaccination against smallpox, calling it "a particularly filthy piece of witchcraft",^[49][50] despite having nearly died from the disease when he contracted it in 1881. In the preface to Doctor's Dilemma he made it plain he regarded traditional medical treatment as dangerous quackery that should be replaced with sound public sanitation, good personal hygiene and diets devoid of meat. Shaw became a vegetarian while he was twenty-five, after hearing a lecture by H.F. Lester.^[51] In 1901, remembering the experience, he said "I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian."^[52] As a staunch vegetarian, he was a firm anti-vivisectionist and antagonistic to cruel sports for the remainder of his life. The belief in the immorality of eating animals was one of the Fabian causes near his heart and is frequently a topic in his plays and prefaces. His position, succinctly stated, was "A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses."^[53]

As well as plays and prefaces, Shaw wrote long political treatises, such as Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889),^[54] and The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1912),^[55] a 495-page book detailing all aspects of socialistic theory as Shaw interpreted it. Excerpts of the latter were republished in 1928 as Socialism and Liberty,^[56] Late in his life he wrote another guide to political issues, Everybody's Political What's What (1944).

Correspondence and friends[link]

Shaw corresponded with an array of people, many of them well-known. His letters to and from Mrs. Patrick Campbell were adapted for the stage by Jerome Kilty as Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters,^[57] as was his correspondence with the poet Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (the intimate friend of Oscar Wilde), into the drama Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship by Anthony Wynn. His letters to the prominent actress, Ellen Terry,^[58] to the boxer Gene Tunney,^[59] and to H.G. Wells,^[60] have also been published. Eventually the volume of his correspondence became insupportable, as can be inferred from apologetic letters written by assistants.^[61] Shaw campaigned against the executions of the rebel leaders of the Easter Rising, and he became a personal friend of the Cork-born IRA leader Michael Collins, whom he invited to his home for dinner while Collins was negotiating the Anglo-Irish Treaty with Lloyd George in London. After Collins's assassination in 1922, Shaw sent a personal message of condolence to one of Collins's sisters. He much admired (and was admired by) G. K. Chesterton.^[62]When Chesterton died, Shaw mourned his passing in a poignant letter to Chesterton's widow; he had always expected that he would predecease Chesterton, being the latter's senior by almost two decades.

Shaw also enjoyed a (somewhat stormy) friendship with T.E. Lawrence, known most notably for his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom and his role as liaison for the Arab revolt during World War I. Lawrence even used the name "Shaw" as his nom de guerre when he joined the Royal Air Force as an aircraftman in the 1920s.

Another friend was the composer Edward Elgar, whose work Shaw revered. Though Elgar was a Conservative, they had interests, besides music, in common – for instance both opposed vivisection. Elgar dedicated one of his late works, Severn Suite, to Shaw; and Shaw exerted himself (eventually with success) to persuade the BBC to commission from Elgar a third symphony, though this piece remained incomplete at Elgar's death. Shaw's correspondence with the motion picture producer Gabriel Pascal, who was the first to bring Shaw's plays successfully to the screen and who later tried to put into motion a musical adaptation of Pygmalion, but died before he could realize it, is published in a book titled Bernard Shaw and Gabriel Pascal.,^[63] A stage play by Hugh Whitemore, The Best of Friends, provides a window on the friendships of Dame Laurentia McLachlan, OSB (late Abbess of Stanbrook) with Sir Sydney Cockerell and Shaw through adaptations from their letters and writings. A television adaptation of the play, aired on PBS, starred John Gielgud as Cockerell, Wendy Hiller as Laurentia, and Patrick McGoohan as Shaw. It is available on DVD.

Photography[link]

Shaw bought his first camera in 1898 and was an active amateur photographer until his death in 1950. Before 1898 Shaw had been an early supporter of photography as a serious art form. His non-fiction writing includes many reviews of photographic exhibitions such as those by his friend Alvin Langdon Coburn.

The photographs document a prolific literary and political life – Shaw's friends, travels, politics, plays, films and home life. It also records his experiments with photography over 50 years and for the photographic historian provides a record of the development of the photographic and printing techniques available to the amateur photographer between 1898 and 1950.

The collection is currently the subject of a major project, Man & Cameraman^[64] which will allow online access to thousands of photos taken by Shaw.

Political and social views[link]

Shaw asserted that each social class strove to serve its own ends, and that the upper and middle classes won in the struggle while the working class lost. He condemned the democratic system of his time, saying that workers, ruthlessly exploited by greedy employers, lived in abject poverty and were too ignorant and apathetic to vote intelligently.^[65] He believed this deficiency would ultimately be corrected by the emergence of long-lived supermen with experience and intelligence enough to govern properly. He called the developmental process elective breeding but it is sometimes referred to as shavian eugenics, largely because he thought it was driven by a "Life Force" that led women — subconsciously — to select the mates most likely to give them superior children.^[66] The outcome Shaw envisioned is dramatised in Back to Methuselah, a monumental play depicting human development from its beginning in the Garden of Eden until the distant future.^[67]

In 1882, influenced by Henry George's views on land nationalization, Shaw concluded that private ownership of land and its exploitation for personal profit was a form of theft, and advocated equitable distribution of land and natural resources and their control by governments intent on promoting the commonwealth. Shaw believed that income for individuals should come solely from the sale of their own labour and that poverty could be eliminated by giving equal pay to everyone. These concepts led Shaw to apply for membership of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), led by H. M. Hyndman who introduced him to the works of Karl Marx. Shaw never joined the SDF, which favoured forcible reforms. Instead, in 1884, he joined the newly formed Fabian Society, which accorded with his belief that reform should be gradual and induced by peaceful means rather than by outright revolution.^[68] Shaw was an active Fabian. He wrote many of their pamphlets,^[54] lectured tirelessly on behalf of their causes and provided money to set up The New Age, an independent socialist journal. As a Fabian, he participated in the formation of the Labour Party. The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism^[55] provides a clear statement of his socialistic views. As evinced in plays like Major Barbara and Pygmalion, class struggle is a motif in much of Shaw's writing.

Oscar Wilde was the sole literary signatory of Shaw's petition for a pardon of the anarchists arrested (and later executed) after the Haymarket massacre in Chicago in 1886.^[69]

Shaw opposed the execution of Sir Roger Casement in 1916. He wrote a letter "as an Irishman"^[70] to The Times, which they rejected, but it was subsequently printed by both the Manchester Guardian on 22 July 1916, and by the New York American on 13 August 1916.

Shaw was not necessarily better informed about actual conditions in other countries than other people were at the time, and tended to believe the best of people who professed similar principles to those he held himself. This led to him taking some positions that now seem grotesque.

After visiting the USSR in 1931 and meeting Joseph Stalin, Shaw became a supporter of the Stalinist USSR. On 11 October 1931 he broadcast a lecture on American national radio telling his audience that any 'skilled workman...of suitable age and good character' would be welcomed and given work in the Soviet Union.^[71] Tim Tzouliadis asserts that hundreds of Americans responded to his suggestion and left for the USSR.^[72]

Shaw continued this support for Stalin's system in the preface to his play On the Rocks (1933) writing:

But the most elaborate code of this sort would still have left unspecified a hundred ways in which wreckers of Communism could have sidetracked it without ever having to face the essential questions: are you pulling your weight in the social boat? are you giving more trouble than you are worth? have you earned the privilege of living in a civilized community? That is why the Russians were forced to set up an Inquisition or Star Chamber, called at first the Cheka and now the Gay Pay Oo (Ogpu), to go into these questions and "liquidate" persons who could not answer them satisfactorily.^[73]

Yet, Shaw defends "the sacredness of criticism":

Put shortly and undramatically the case is that a civilization cannot progress without criticism, and must therefore, to save itself from stagnation and putrefaction, declare impunity for criticism. This means impunity not only for propositions which, however novel, seem interesting, statesmanlike, and respectable, but for propositions that shock the uncritical as obscene, seditious, blasphemous, heretical, and revolutionary.^[73]

In an open letter to the Manchester Guardian in 1933, he dismissed stories—which were later determined to be largely substantiated—of a Soviet famine as slanderous, and contrasts them with the hardships then current in the West during the Great Depression:

We desire to record that we saw nowhere evidence of such economic slavery, privation, unemployment and cynical despair of betterment as are accepted as inevitable and ignored by the press as having "no news value" in our own countries."^[74]

In the preface to On The Rocks he wrote:

It sounds simple; but the process requires better planning than is always forthcoming (with local famines and revolts as the penalty); for while the grass grows the steed starves; and when education means not only schools and teachers, but giant collective farms equipped with the most advanced agricultural machinery, which means also gigantic engineering works for the production of the machinery, you may easily find that you have spent too much on these forms of capitalization and are running short of immediately consumable goods, presenting the spectacle of the nation with the highest level of general culture running short of boots and tightening its belt for lack of sufficient food.
I must not suggest that this has occurred all over Russia; for I saw no underfed people there; and the children were remarkably plump. And I cannot trust the reports; for I have no sooner read in The Times a letter from Mr Kerensky assuring me that in the Ukraine the starving people are eating one another, than M. Herriot, the eminent French statesman, goes to Russia and insists on visiting the Ukraine so that he may have ocular proof of the alleged cannibalism, but can find no trace of it. Still, between satiety and starvation mitigated by cannibalism there are many degrees of shortage; and it is no secret that the struggle of the Russian Government to provide more collective farms and more giant factories to provide agricultural machinery for them has to be carried on against a constant clamor from the workers for new boots and clothes, and more varied food and more of it: in short, less sacrifice of the present to the future.^[73]

He wrote a defence of Lysenkoism in a letter to Labour Monthly, in which he asserted that an "acquired characteristic" could be heritable, writing of Lysenko: "Following up Michurin's agricultural experiments he found that it is possible to extend the area of soil cultivation by breeding strains of wheat that flourish in a sub-Arctic climate, and transmit this acquired characteristic to its seed." He added:

Despite Shaw's scepticism about the creation of the Irish Free State, he was supportive of Éamon de Valera's stance on the Second World War, including his policy of refusing to fall in line with the Allies' demand towards neutral countries on refusing to provide asylum to Axis refugees during the war. According to Shaw "The voice of the Irish gentleman and Spanish grandee was a welcome relief from the chorus of retaliatory rancor and self-righteousness then deafening us".^[76]

Eugenics[link]

Shaw delivered speeches on the theory of eugenics and he became a noted figure in the movement in England.^[77]

Shaw's play Man and Superman (1903) has been said to be "invested with eugenic doctrines" and "an ironic reworking" of Nietzsche's concept of Übermensch.^[77][78] The main character in the play, John Tanner, is the author of "The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion", which Shaw published along with his play. The Revolutionist's Handbook includes chapters on "Good Breeding" and "Property and Marriage". In the "Property and Marriage" section Tanner writes:

"To cut humanity up into small cliques, and effectively limit the selection of the individual to his own clique, is to postpone the Superman for eons, if not for ever. Not only should every person be nourished and trained as a possible parent, but there should be no possibility of such an obstacle to natural selection as the objection of a countess to a navvy or of a duke to a charwoman. Equality is essential to good breeding; and equality, as all economists know, is incompatible with property."

In this Shaw was managing to synthesize eugenics with socialism, his best-loved political doctrine. This was a popular concept at the time.^[79]

Shaw in his later years

When, in 1910, Shaw wrote that natural attraction rather than wealth or social class should govern selection of marriage partners, the concept of eugenics did not have the negative connotations it later acquired after having been adopted by the Nazis of Germany.^[80] Shaw sometimes treated the topic in a light-hearted way, pointing out that if eugenics had been thought about some generations previously, he himself may not have been born, so depriving humanity of his great contributions.^[81] He seems to have maintained his opinion throughout his life.^[80]

As with many of the topics that Shaw addressed, but particularly so in his examination of the "social purity" movement, he used irony, misdirection and satire to make his point.^[73][82][83] At a meeting of the Eugenics Education Society of 3 March 1910 he suggested the need to use a "lethal chamber" to solve their problem. Shaw said: "We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment ..." Shaw also called for the development of a "deadly" but "humane" gas for the purpose of killing, many at a time, those unfit to live.^[84]

In a newsreel interview released on 5 March 1931, dealing with alternatives to the imprisonment of criminals, Shaw says

You must all know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight in the social boat, if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the organizations of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.^[85][86]

Shaw, however, often used satiric irony in order to mock those who took eugenics to inhumane extremes and commentators have sometimes failed to take this into account.^[77][87] Some noticed that this was an example of Shaw satirically employing the reductio ad absurdum argument against the eugenicists' wilder aspirations: The Globe and The Evening News recognised it as a skit on the dreams of the eugenicists, though many others in the press took his words out of their satirical context. Dan Stone of Liverpool University writes: "Either the press believed Shaw to be serious, and vilified him, or recognised the tongue-in-cheek nature of his lecture".^[87][88]

Religion[link]

In his will, Shaw stated that his "religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative revolution."^[89] He requested that no one should imply that he accepted the beliefs of any specific religious organization, and that no memorial to him should "take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice."^[89]

Legacy[link]

A statue of Shaw in Niagara-on-the-Lake

In his old age, Shaw was a household name both in Britain and Ireland, and was famed throughout the world. His ironic wit endowed English with the adjective "Shavian", used to characterize observations such as: "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world." Concerned about the vagaries of English spelling, Shaw willed a portion of his wealth (probated at £367,233 13s)^[90] to fund the creation of a new phonemic alphabet for the English language.^[91] However, the money available was insufficient to support the project, so it was neglected for a time. This changed when his estate began earning significant royalties from the rights to Pygmalion after My Fair Lady—the musical adapted from Pygmalion by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe—became a hit. However, the Public Trustee found the intended trust to be invalid because its intent was to serve a private interest instead of a charitable purpose, and as a non-charitable purpose trust, it could not be enforced because it failed to satisfy the beneficiary principle.^[92] In the end an out-of-court settlement granted only £8600 for promoting the new alphabet, which is now called the Shavian alphabet. The National Gallery of Ireland, RADA and the British Museum all received substantial bequests.

Shaw's home, now called Shaw's Corner, in the small village of Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire is a National Trust property, open to the public.^[93] The Shaw Theatre, Euston Road, London, opened in 1971, was named in his honour.^[94] Near its entrance, opposite the new British Library, a contemporary statue of Saint Joan commemorates Shaw as author of that play.

The Shaw Festival, an annual theater festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada began as an eight week run of Don Juan in Hell (as the long third act dream sequence of Man And Superman is called when staged alone) and Candida in 1962, and has grown into an annual festival with over 800 performances a year, dedicated to producing the works of Shaw and his contemporaries. The portrait of George Bernard Shaw located at Niagara-on-the-Lake was commissioned by hotelier Si Wai Lai and sculpted by Dr. Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook, CM (1913–2009).^[95][96]

He is also remembered as one of the pivotal founders of the London School of Economics, whose library is now called the British Library of Political and Economic Science. The Fabian Window, designed by Shaw, hangs in the Shaw Library in the main building of the LSE.

Works[link]

Novels[link]

• Immaturity
• Cashel Byron's Profession
• An Unsocial Socialist
• The Irrational Knot
• Love Among the Artists

Short stories[link]

• The Black Girl in Search of God (1932)
• The Miraculous Revenge

Drama[link]

Essays[link]

• Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891)
• The Perfect Wagnerite, Commentary on the Ring (1898)
• Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
• Preface to Major Barbara (1905)
• "On Going to Church" (1905)
• How to Write a Popular Play (1909)
• Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
• Common Sense about the War (1914)
• The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928)
• Major Critical Essays (1930). Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891), The Perfect Wagnerite (1898) and The Sanity of Art in one volume.
• Essays in Fabian Socialism (1931). Revised and reprinted in the Standard Edition, 1932.
• Pen Portraits and Reviews (1931). Revised and reprinted in the Standard Edition, 1932.
• Doctors' Delusions, Crude Criminology, Sham Education (1931). Revised and reprinted in the Standard Edition, 1932.
• Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings (1932). Revised and reprinted in the Standard Edition, 1934.
• Our Theatres in the Nineties (1932). Collected drama criticism.
• Dictators – Let Us Have More of Them (1938)
• Everybody's Political What's What? (1944)
• Sixteen Self Sketches (1949)
• The Selected Prose of Bernard Shaw (1952). Selected and with Introduction by Diarmuid Russell. One thousand pages of essays, criticism, extracts from novels, etc. Contains The Perfect Wagnerite and The Quintessence of Ibsenism complete, including prefaces. Also contains Shaw's biographical prefaces to Immaturity and London Music in 1888–1889. Thematically organised and finely introduced. Excellent introduction to the scope of Shaw's prose.
• Shaw on Shakespeare: An Anthology of Bernard Shaw's Writings (1961)
• Shaw: An Autobiography (1970). Selected and edited by Stanley Weintraub. 2 vols.
• What Shaw Really Wrote about the War (2006). Edited by J. L. Wisenthal and Daniel O'Leary.

Musical Criticism[link]

• Music in London 1890–94. Criticism Contributed Week by Week to the World. 3 vols, 1932.
• London Music in 1888–89 as Heard by Corno di Bassetto (later known as Bernard Shaw) with Some Further Autobiographical Particulars, 1937. Contains important, some 30 pages long, preface by Shaw.
• Collected Music Criticism. New York: Vienna House, 1973. 4 vols. Reprints the two titles above.
• How to Become a Musical Critic. Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960. Edited and with Introduction by Dan H. Laurence. Previously uncollected pieces on music written between 1883 and 1950.
• Shaw's Music: The Complete Musical Criticism Of Bernard Shaw. The Bodley Head, Paperback, 1989. 3 vols. Second Revised Edition. Edited by Dan H. Laurence. Definitive edition.
  • Vol. 1: 1876–1890. Editor's Introduction and Notes, including one to the Second Edition.
  • Vol. 2: 1890–1893.
  • Vol. 3: 1893–1950. General Index to all volumes.
    • Note. First published in hardback in 1981. The Second Revised Edition was published only in paperback and it differs from the earlier one by only four short pieces [Dan H. Laurence, 'Editor's Note to the Second Edition'].
• Shaw on Music. Applause, 2000. Edited by Eric Bentley. Fine, thematically organised selection, mostly from Shaw's professional criticism (1889–1894).
• The Perfect Wagnerite (1898). Dover edition, 1967. Reprint of the Fourth Edition (1923). Contains the prefaces to the first three editions.

Debate[link]

• Shaw v. Chesterton, a debate between George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton (2000) Third Way Publications Ltd. ISBN 0-9535077-7-7. E-text
• Do We Agree, a debate between G. B. Shaw and G. K. Chesterton with Hilaire Belloc as chairman (1928)

See also[link]

• List of vegetarians

Notes[link]